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Standing on the shoulders of giants: young aphids piggyback on adults when searching for a host plant
BACKGROUND: Upon the detection of imminent peril, pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum) often drop off their host plant. Dropping in response to insect enemies is intermittent in nature, but when a mammalian herbivore feeds on their host plant, a large mixed-age group of aphids usually drops off the plan...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282293/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30534184 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-018-0292-7 |
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author | Gish, Moshe Inbar, Moshe |
author_facet | Gish, Moshe Inbar, Moshe |
author_sort | Gish, Moshe |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Upon the detection of imminent peril, pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum) often drop off their host plant. Dropping in response to insect enemies is intermittent in nature, but when a mammalian herbivore feeds on their host plant, a large mixed-age group of aphids usually drops off the plant at once. Aphids that reach the ground are confronted with new, hostile environmental conditions and must therefore quickly walk toward a suitable host plant. The longer it takes an aphid to reach a host plant, the more it is exposed to the risks of starvation, desiccation and predation. RESULTS: We found that young nymphs, which have limited mobility and high mortality on the ground, quickly climb on conspecific (not necessarily parental) adults and cling to them before the latter start walking in search of a plant. This “riding” behavior is likely to be adaptive for the nymphs, for it shortens their journey and the time they spend off a host plant. Adults however, seem to be irritated by the riding nymphs, as they often actively try to remove them. CONCLUSIONS: After dropping from the host plant, young aphid nymphs travel at least part of the way back to a plant on the backs of adults. For the riding behavior to take place, nymphs need to successfully find adults and withstand removal attempts. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12983-018-0292-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6282293 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-62822932018-12-10 Standing on the shoulders of giants: young aphids piggyback on adults when searching for a host plant Gish, Moshe Inbar, Moshe Front Zool Research BACKGROUND: Upon the detection of imminent peril, pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum) often drop off their host plant. Dropping in response to insect enemies is intermittent in nature, but when a mammalian herbivore feeds on their host plant, a large mixed-age group of aphids usually drops off the plant at once. Aphids that reach the ground are confronted with new, hostile environmental conditions and must therefore quickly walk toward a suitable host plant. The longer it takes an aphid to reach a host plant, the more it is exposed to the risks of starvation, desiccation and predation. RESULTS: We found that young nymphs, which have limited mobility and high mortality on the ground, quickly climb on conspecific (not necessarily parental) adults and cling to them before the latter start walking in search of a plant. This “riding” behavior is likely to be adaptive for the nymphs, for it shortens their journey and the time they spend off a host plant. Adults however, seem to be irritated by the riding nymphs, as they often actively try to remove them. CONCLUSIONS: After dropping from the host plant, young aphid nymphs travel at least part of the way back to a plant on the backs of adults. For the riding behavior to take place, nymphs need to successfully find adults and withstand removal attempts. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12983-018-0292-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2018-12-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6282293/ /pubmed/30534184 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-018-0292-7 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Gish, Moshe Inbar, Moshe Standing on the shoulders of giants: young aphids piggyback on adults when searching for a host plant |
title | Standing on the shoulders of giants: young aphids piggyback on adults when searching for a host plant |
title_full | Standing on the shoulders of giants: young aphids piggyback on adults when searching for a host plant |
title_fullStr | Standing on the shoulders of giants: young aphids piggyback on adults when searching for a host plant |
title_full_unstemmed | Standing on the shoulders of giants: young aphids piggyback on adults when searching for a host plant |
title_short | Standing on the shoulders of giants: young aphids piggyback on adults when searching for a host plant |
title_sort | standing on the shoulders of giants: young aphids piggyback on adults when searching for a host plant |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282293/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30534184 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-018-0292-7 |
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